Well, on Monday evening, as billed here, I had the chance to put these points direct to the Daily Telegraph’s assistant editor, Andrew Pierce, at a debate posing the question, A triumph for journalism? (You can watch the debate online here – worth watching in full, but the section focusing on Jo starts about 29 minutes in).

Mr. Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD): I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. Of course everyone agrees that the political crisis requires big changes in the way we do things, so I welcome this deathbed conversion to political reform from the man who has blocked

Politics is like tournament bridge. It’s not the quality of the cards you are dealt that matters. It’s how well you play the hand.

Cameron was dealt a rotten hand over expenses. His party is a bunch of upper class rotters milking the public purse. Cameron turned this to his own advantage. He summoned the rotters to his study and gave them all a good caning. He also effectively saw off the reform agenda in a cloud of grandiloquent promises. These amounted to a cast-iron commitment to think hard about …

Fifty-six Lib Dem PPCs have put their name to an open letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin:

Dear Mr Speaker,

As Parliament continues to be dragged down by the allowance system, and its rules, the role of those in public service across the country is being undermined.

We are Liberal Democrat candidates seeking to be elected to Parliament and yet we find ourselves disappointed, and frustrated, at the way in which this matter is being handled. Every day our residents are telling us loudly that this must stop and this must stop now.

An ironic twist in the latest MP expenses story – this time is it James Purnell, the minister in charge of ensuring that the rest of us don’t claim too much in expenses, who is accused of claiming back more in rental costs than he actually paid out. The Sunday Express writes:

CABINET Minister James Purnell was under pressure last night to explain why he claimed £10,000 more in Parliamentary expenses than he paid in rent for his London flat.

The Welfare and Pensions Secretary, tipped as a future leader of the Labour Party, pocketed £10,143 more than the rent he

There’s a nifty little Google Map at http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/maps/mpTravelExpensesMap.html which is a great example of how you can use maps to make statistics clearer. In this case, the big issue is that MPs do have genuinely different legitimate travel needs depending on where they live. It’s only reasonable for an MP from Scotland to have much higher travel expenses than one who lives in London, for example.

Putting the sums on a map helps show the patterns which are reasonable. And it also highlights those which are a bit more surprising, such as the previously mentioned Margaret Moran, Labour MP …

The former chairman of the Standards Committee, Sir Alistair Graham, has acquired rather a habit of speaking out bluntly to put pressure on MPs over their standards and he’s done it again on Newsnight:

“It must not look as if you’re manipulating expenses for your own financial gain.”

If it is found Ms Smith resides in her London home more nights a week than her Redditch home, he said: “She’ll be in the clear in the sense of the rules, but in the sense of her political career – she won’t be.” (PoliticsHome)

The Communications Allowance is a fund for each MP of £10,000 a year of taxpayers money to spend on ensuring their re-election communicating with their constituents. That is a pretty massive sum. At current prices as a sitting MP I could have a full colour A3 delivered to every house in a constituency four times a year. By anyone’s standards its a massive boost to local campaigning

So I’m awaiting details as to how MPs have spent this windfall with interest. And it will be declared by the Parliamentary authorities.

The surprise announcement made during prime ministers questions follows the collapse overnight of a bipartisan agreement between Brown and David Cameron, the Tory leader, to back a parliamentary order exempting MPs’ expenses from the act. The move came after he was challenged by a Tory backbencher over why he was in favour of keeping them secret.

It means that plans to issue 1.2m receipts for MPs’ expenses over the past three years are likely to go ahead within weeks.

Last night, it was not clear if there was an organised Tory position on the emerging scandal concerning freedom of information and MPs’ expenses. Last week’s Guardian confided: “A Tory source said David Cameron was likely to encourage his MPs to abstain on Thursday”

The same Guardian article last week had Lib Dem Shadow Leader of the House David Heath saying, “his is not a matter for a whipped vote I will certainly be recommending that colleagues vote against the proposal to exempt parliament.”

This morning, all change. “Tory frontbench and Lib Dems fight move to hide MPs’ expenses”, the

It was also the week in which self-serving ministers moved to ban the public from knowing how MPs spend public money. We wrote about that here, and were pleased to hear that Jo Swinson tabled an EDM on the subject. If you’re at all twitter-minded, the hashtag #MPexpenses is seeing a fair bit of traffic as twitizens exhort each other to contact MPs in protest.

Today is the last day you can contact your MP to urge them to vote against emergency legislation preventing the publication of parliamentarian’s expenses.

News of the planned exemption hit the headlines only last Friday giving this campaign scant time to get started. Many MPs are unaware a vote a scheduled, since it has been timetabled to a slot when many may already have left for their constituencies.

It’s times like these when fast communication tools like Twitter and Facebook come into their own.

A hashtag – #MPexpenses – soon evolved. I watched in awe over the weekend as a …

Yesterday David Heath said that both he and Nick Clegg opposed plans to exempt MPs from having to publish full details of their expenses. Now fellow Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson has said she will be putting down a Parliamentary motion supporting this opposition:

Jo Swinson, will on Monday table a parliamentary motion against the Government’s decision to exempt MPs from publishing full details of their expenses.

The motion criticises the “regressive effect” of the move on Parliamentary transparency.

Commenting, Jo Swinson said: “Ministers should not be cooking up plans to keep MPs’ expenses hidden from public view. With this

Today’s Guardian reports on Labour’s latest attempts to dilute the very Freedom of Information Act (2000) which it once passed:

Ministers today faced a backlash following the revelation that they are backing plans to exempt MPs from Freedom of Information Act legislation. The Liberal Democrats denounced the move, saying the party’s MPs would be advised to vote against the plan when it is considered in a free vote next Thursday. Tories are being urged to abstain. However, with many backbenchers from the two main parties privately in favour of the move, it is expected to be approved. …